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Experts at Sophos have warned British computer users who bank online about a series of Trojan horses that try and steal financial information.

The Tofger Trojan horses target users of a number of online banks, including Abbey, Barclays, Cahoot, HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest, Nationwide, and Woolwich.

Running in the background, the Trojan horse monitors which websites are being visited - and if it recognises an online banking website it secretly captures keypresses and takes snapshots of what is displayed on the monitor.

The information is then sent back to the remote hackers, who can use the captured data to break into bank accounts and steal money.

"This is very different from the fraudulent emails which many computer users receive everyday, trying to lure you to a bogus website. This Trojan waits for the customer to visit the real banking website, and then it captures passwords and account information making robbery a breeze," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "Home users and businesses large and small need to protect themselves with up-to-date anti-virus software and take extreme care to ensure their computers are kept free from Trojans like Tofger and other malware."

Sophos recommends companies protect their email with a consolidated solution to thwart the virus and spam threats as well as secure their desktop and servers with automatically updated anti-virus protection.

About Sophos

More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing complete security solutions that are simple to deploy, manage, and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, mobile and network security solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers.

Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.